This invention relates generally to surface covering articles and more specifically to the field of simulated wood grain surface covering articles. The invention also relates to a method of making a surface covering article which possesses the unique visual qualities of a finished wood product and which can be of particular use in the resilient floor and furniture industries.
Surface coverings, and in particular resilient floorings, are selected by the consumer largely on the basis of durability, ease of maintenance and cost. Consumers have, in recent times, been bypassing the use of finished wood floors in favor of resilient synthetic floors for economic reasons and for ease of maintenance. However, because of the beauty of a finished wood floor, many efforts have been made to simulate the look of wood grains on resilient flooring. For example, one well-known method of producing simulated wood grain is to reproduce photographically a wood grain pattern and apply it to a suitable base surface. Other well-known methods include applying a wood grain pattern by printing or engraving means, such as hot stamping foils and roll and rotogravure printing or by heat transfer means. However, such surface coverings invariably merely resemble wood, appearing even on a casual glance as being a wood simulation. This is caused in part because real wood has physical structure and surface qualities that give it a visual image when finished that cannot be reproduced by printing or photographic means alone. In particular, many finished wood products have visual qualities that change, in reference to the viewer, with the angle of incident light on the surface of the wood. This effect, which is sometimes known as directional flip, may be noted by the transformation of the area viewed from light to dark shades and vice versa as the angle of incident illumination and/or the angle of view are changed. Natural wood also possesses in its wood grain a sheen or luster and, even on smooth surfaces, a non-surface texture three dimensional effect which are difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate in a printed or photographically reproduced pattern.
It is an object of the present invention to provide surface covering articles with many of the visual properties set forth above which can be employed on flooring, furniture, countertop surfacing products and the like. It is a further object to supply a surface covering material that possesses many of real wood's visual qualities through the use of nonwood materials.
These objects have been surprisingly accomplished in an effective manner through the incorporation, in a surface covering, of aligned hollow fibers, metallic fibers, or mixtures thereof, to simulate the light scattering qualities of real wood's fibrous lumen. It has been discovered that both hollow fibers and metallic fibers possess qualities which promote the reflective scattering of incident light in a manner similar to that of real wood. In the case of hollow fibers, these qualities are due in part to the variation of the refractive index at the fiber material air hollow interface. In the case of metallic fibers, such visual qualities are created in part by the relatively large refractive index variation between the fiber and the binder in which they are in contact. Through the use of such aligned hollow and/or metallic fibers there is provided a unique, aesthetically attractive, functional resilient wood replication which can be employed, for example, as a floor covering material and which has many of the visual properties of real wood.